Warren Cammack

For those who haven’t heard of them Innovation Bay are a NFP who help to connect Sydneysiders who are interested in technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. They host a number of breakfast sessions where in addition to networking they have one or more industry speakers presenting in a fun way. They also host pitch/investor dinners and a host of other great events but to date I’ve only attended the breakfasts so cannot comment on these.

This morning’s event saw a panel of retail specialists discussing how their industry is changing. The panel comprised of:

• Michael Fox – CEO, Shoes of Prey
• Fiona Moylan – Business Manager New Ventures, Westfield
• Matt Newell – Strategy Partner, The General Store
• Rolf Weber - Managing Directory, brandsExclusive
• Moderator: Ian Gardiner – Co-Founder, Innovation Bay

Key Takeouts from the discussion:

• Retail in Australia has typically been supply driven competition i.e. lowest cost of flat screen TV. Now that online retailers are coming with giant economies of scale it’s moving to experience based demand driving sales
• Westfield found that consumers were searching on their website but using it for research only, creating wish lists and buying in store
• Unlikely that Amazon will open operations in Australia as postage costs are identical inside or outside of the country
• Would Alibaba come to Australia? Would the size of the market make it worthwhile for them?
• Westfield is focused on getting people into their centre using events as the attraction
• Consumer behaviour is shifting from product to experiences as people can really afford to buy anything so price is not a differentiator
• People want experiences more than anything and buy things as a memento of the occasion
• Shoes of Prey saw most of their business grow through word of mouth, they are now moving beyond this to testing the ability for customers to design four pairs of shoes and ask their friends for feedback on facebook
• How to convey quality online? Great photos, video, open a physical store
• Do you really need an app or will a mobile site suffice?